Akhania
Akhania Stormhammer = Appearance = Both voluptuous and curvaceous, Akhania looks to be a very healthy female. Her larger than average frame seems to accent this fact, showing off her thick legs, broad hips, and impressive bust line. When she walks, it's clear that her physical build affects the way she walks, swaying her hips side to side. As of late, she has stopped shaving her hair, and has snipped off her long braid. She now sports a very short, almost boyish looking hairstyle. Her face is smooth and relatively plain, except for two long, deep gashes, one looks to be a very deep claw mark, the other a deep burn mark that was there previously. Both travel from the top right of her forehead down, through her eye, to the bottom of her cheek. Her skin is also an off color, more of a dark gray-green color. = Personality = Akhania tends to keep a friendly, warm personality to herself, despite having been raised from the dead to become a Death Knight. When she needs to, however, she can become almost frigid and harsh to speak with. This stern attitude is rare, and is usually reserved for combat situations. = History = The history of Akhania's clan, the Stormhammer Clan, is broken down into various categories: What she was told as a child growing up, the truth behind this, and her coming to Durotar. The Legend What can be told is her past life, one of solitude, living peacefully in the mountains of Alterac. Akhania’s clan was one of powerful standing within the Horde on Draenor, the Orcs home before the coming of the Shadow Council. It was they who provoked the Orcs to travel to Azeroth, and to slaughter in the name of the Burning Legion. When the Orcs invaded this land, the Stormhammer clan came with them, and maimed and killed in the name of the Horde, ignorant of the corruption of their brethren. When word came from the Frostwolf clan that the Horde was being used by demons, the noble Warchief Kharnak Stormhammer immediately ordered his clan to cease its battles with the Humans, and to retreat into solitude, much as the Frostwolves had done. This caused an uproar in the Horde, but as time passed, the Horde was defeated and rounded up into camps. The Stormhammers managed to remain solitary for a great deal of time, and during this time, the Warchief and his wife, Lokarra, bore a daughter. This infant was intended to be their heir to the Stormhammer clan. Eventually, the noble Warchief grew weary of sitting idly by while his people, corrupted or not, sat in the Humans camps, wallowing in their defeat. He mounted a mighty raid into one of the camps to attempt to save his brethren, but when they would not aid him and retreat from the camp he realized that they had grown complacent and sluggish due to the lack of demonic power in their blood. It was then that the trap was sprung on the Stormhammer clan, and they were surrounded within the camp and overpowered. As a last act of sacrifice, the Warchief ordered his wife, who had participated in the raid but had not entered the camp, to flee into the mountains and protect their daughter for as long as she could. With tears in her eyes, she watched through the wood planks of the internment camp as her mate was surrounded and shackled by Humans. She did as told, and fled into the hills. This was the lie that Akhania was told. This is the lie that Akhania tells to others. The truth is far more brutal... The Brutal Truth The Stormhammer Clan was for a long time a peaceful, shamanistic clan on the Orcish homeworld of Draenor. The clan was ruled by a class of women known as the Matriarchs, each one chosen personally by the previous Matriarch before their death. However, Akhania's mother Lohkara changed all that. After the Demonic pact with the Burning Legion was struck, Lohkara made her bid for power, and assassinated the Matriarch who ruled the clan at the time. She stole control of the clan and, under her rule, she forced the clan to agree to the demon pacts that the other Clans had agreed to. The Legion gave her great control over Fel Magic and allowed her to run her Clan as she saw fit, so long as she did their bidding. Much later, after the Orcish Hordes had been rounded up in the internment camps of Lordaeron, and after much bloodshed and bloody slaughter, the corrupted Stormhammer Clan fled into the mountains of Alterac. There Lohkara took a mate and had two daughters, but shortly after the two girls were born, her mate challenged her for leadership of the clan. Refusing the challenge, Lohkara slaughtered her former mate. This created a rift in the clan between those loyal to Lohkara's fel leadership and her mate's challenge. The clan ripped itself apart in brutal infighting and murder. In the midst of the fighting, one of her daughters was lost, the other, Akhania, she stole away with higher up into the mountainous region. There the two of them lived, alone and cut off while the Stormhammer clan obliterated itself save for only a handful of lucky survivors. For seven years the two lived in solitude, scratching a living from the cold, cruel wild. A week before Akhania's eighth winter in Alterac, a Human Expedition from Lordaeron discovered the two in a cave in the mountains. Lohkara, not able to fully conjure the Fel Magics that had empowered her before, was killed in the fight, and the Captain of the Human expedition left her daughter to freeze to death in the snow. Lohkara's spirit, however, became trapped in a much weakened and flawed Soul Stone. Akhania was forced to live through the winter surviving on the meat of the wolves that had been butchered, and using their skins as cloaks to protect herself. It was the most desperate year of her life, and she was forced to learn quickly to survive on her own. It was in this same storm that she was visited by the Earth Spirit of the mountains. It whispered to her that she could call upon its strength to aid her, and so she did. Without this, the girl would have surely died. Using only what limited survival skills she had, and the power of the Earth Spirits, she endured the harsh winter, and into the spring. Flight to Durotar For years she lived alone, with only the Spirits to whisper to. She made her living there in the mountains for eleven years, not knowing another living soul even knowing of her existence. That is, until a Horde Raiding party came through the area, including the now-Forsaken captain who had ordered her mother slain. They discovered the girl living peacefully in a cave in the mountains, and going only on the knowledge that she was an Orc, brought her to Durotar. Upon her arrival in the Orcish lands, she was bewildered by the thought of there being more Orcs than just her. She was lost in a sea of green skinned brutes, and she had no idea of where to go. The raiding party had whispered of a clan in the area, the Tears of Draenor, who they believed could take her in. Akhania took this information and eagerly contacted their leader, Ruarc. Ever since then, Akhania has had a sense of devotion to the Tears, believing them to be her new family. Recent Changes Arriving in Northrend is enough to turn the hearts of almost any career soldier to ice, or worse. Akhania is no exception. Upon seeing the endless hatred, violence, and hopelessness that surrounds the entire continent of Northrend, Akhania decided that her methods of fighting were insufficient. She could no longer bear the burden of being a Shaman, the constant requests for healing aid, the pleas and cries for help. She couldn't take it any more, and finally decided to throw down her hammer, break her ties to the Elemental Spirits, destroy her totems, and walk away from the path of Shamanism forever. Having forsaken her Shamanistic path, she took to the ways of the assassin in an attempt not only to seclude herself from others, but to achieve her own means without the restraints of being beholden to the Spirits, or anyone else. This lead her down a path that resulted in her attempt to achieve revenge against the now-Forsaken Undead who slew her Mother. Before she could properly attack him, however, the two were surrounded by the Scourge and taken down. The Scourge utterly destroyed her mother's killer, Valdrik. Akhania, however, was mortally wounded and dragged back to one of their towers to be reanimated as a Death Knight. The Spirits that she had forsaken, however, were not prepared to allow another of their former followers, however misguided she may be, fall to darkness completely and serve the Scourge, so during an Argent Crusade raid on the Scourge Tower where she was reanimated, the Spirits of Earth managed to roughly free her mind from the will of Arthas. With her newfound freedom, she escaped Ice Crown and headed through the Dark Portal to Outland to hone her skills and prepare her mind for when she would inevitably return to Northrend to fight the Scourge once more. She now serves as a Death Knight of the Raven Blade, a shadowy group of individuals who guard and protect the Tears of Draenor clan. She stands proudly among her dark comrades as she does all that she can to defend those she cares about from those that would do them harm. category:Horde category:Orc Category:Death Knight